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Technology Stocks : Cabletron Systems (CS: NYSE) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kech who wrote (2667)	12/17/1997 6:09:00 PM
From: 4finger	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8358

IMHO it was just slower than planned. Aint that always the case. Cabletron's direct sales efforts are geared to fortune 1000 type of accounts, and it is these larger enterprises that are more likely to be early adopters of the high end switching gear/power networks, than the small to mid size router-oriented customers. Cabletron has some pretty major initiatives in place right now to develop indirect sales channels via Ingram, Digital(Europe) etc. While some gorwing pains are to be expected, I think they are going to surprise some people as these "new" channels evolve. By now the chart on CS must have all the chart watchers moving on to greener pastures, so it is time to change the channel and get us fundamental geeks to pick through the debris. Any fundamental analysis lurkers out there.

To: kech who wrote (2667)	12/20/1997 6:09:00 PM
From: Doug	Respond to of 8358

Many analyst including Mr Lindsay are prone to using jargon to confuse us laymen further. He refers to a high end shared media hubs. All hubs by definition share their media i.e they broadcast their packet in hand to all the others on the LAN. There is nothing like an "unshared media hub". A hub is merely a concentrator of wire connections from all stations on a LAN in a star topology. It is the control point for managing the extension,growth, and load of a LAN. There are intelligent hubs which really means thru the Hub operators console you can configure the wiring on an as required basis from time to time. Hubs are standalone, stackable and Modular.A modular Hub is a container having many hubs. In brief,the topology of a LAN that uses a common Protocol is controlled by a hub. A network consisting of many LAN's with same or different protocols are traditionally interconnected thru Bridges and Routers. A bridge is a hardware device that act as a filter and only forwards packets that are addressed to addresses on another segment. A router acts a hub but the wiring connections between the ports is trigerred thru a Software table that stores a matrix of addresses. An intelligent router builds up the matrix by learning. The more intelligent ones instantly know the net traffic pattern and secondary routes in the entire net. As speeds and loads increase, the CPU time to process the matrix causes delays. This is not acceptable for real time high speed data. Routers cost more since the hardware is Software driven and requires careful programming for real time. Programmers cost bucks.! Enter the world of Switches. Switches are of 2 type I.P switches and plain switches. A switch is basically a programmable hardware(ASIC) device that automatically configure a network on the fly. Its a switch when the different ports all use the same protocol.When ports use different protocol, they need to change Envelopes and the switch that does that is an intelligent switch. A switch can replace a Bridge and a Router. It is expandable and can create virtual LAN's on the fly. As said before IP switches change protocols which is essential as Ethernet/Fast Ethernet LAN's join up with higher speed LAN'S/WAN's. Switches are manufactured by the leading vendors. 3COM,BAY,CSCO, INTEL and Cabletron. Cabletron's switches are said to have more features than the rest. Features refer to backplane speed, size of matrix table, no of virtual LAN's etc. The switch market is highly competitive but an expanding one. Lets hope we have a switch Salesman on this thread for "Market distribution" and comparisons. I have made an attempt to explain in simple terms the product that I have staked a part of my fortunes on. I hope,that the more knowlegable will correct any errors and educate me further as a freebee for my Investment. A Merry Xmas to all on this thread.